The next Nordic Sounds meeting at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo features Professor Fabian Holt (Humbolt-Universität zu Berlin) & Professor Tina K. Ramnarine (Royal Holloway University of London) who willl present their chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries (forthcoming).

Trip-hop/electronic outfit freezerRoom perform at Electric Picnic's AfterDark in the Hazel Wood stage, with a host of guests including Wallis Bird, Jack O'Rourke, Joe O'Leary, Tracey K, Clara Hill, and Gemma Sugrue, Paul Dunlea and many more. Kicking off at midnight, this show will officially launch the new freezerRoom's album Fire on The Ocean, which goes on sale Friday September 1st.

Recorded in Cork, Berlin, and London, Fire on The Ocean features Tracey K (Fish Go Deep), Joe O'Leary (Fred) and Ray Scannell (The Shades) on vocals, Christian Eigner (Depeche Mode) on drums, and Áine Mangaoang on violin.

The Prisons of Note project at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, is pleased to welcome Prof. Ben Harbert from the Department of Performing Arts, Georgetown University (Washington DC) to present his research on music in Louisiana prisons, in a lecture titled Musical Vestiges of Prison Reform at Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The lecture is followed by invited responses by Prof. Even Ruud & Prof. Hans Weisethaunet, and chaired by Áine Mangaoang.

Follow Me Down is a feature-length documentary about music in prison. Shot over the course of two years in three Louisiana prisons, ethnomusicologist Ben Harbert weaves together interviews & performances of extraordinary inmate musicians — some serving life sentences, some new commits & one soon to be released. The result plays like a concert film, but instead of bright lights & big stages, these musicians rap in okra fields, soothe themselves with R&B in lockdown & create gospel harmonies on the yard. This film offers an unexpected look at prison life, pushing viewers to reach their own conclusions about music, criminality, & humanity.

“Well conceived and thoughtful in its representation of the topic, Follow Me Down will be of great interest to ethnomusicologists, Americanists, anthropologists, and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences interested specifically in music and prison life, or music and music making in the context of adversity. It also provides a great educational resource for exploring questions of music and meaning (personal, spiritual, and social), musical continuity and change (in comparison with Lomax’s earlier work), musical ethnography, and ethnographic filmmaking at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.”— Francisco Lara, Independent Scholar for University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology

“It brings us up to date on the music of the people who are imprisoned in this country. We can no longer imagine it to be the work songs of 70 years ago...it’s a really groundbreaking film....a very important film.” — Anthony Seeger, Director Emeritus, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

The event includes an exhibition of items from two of Liverpool’s hidden archives, the Institute’s Popular Music Archive and Open Eye Gallery’s archive, selected and curated by project participants. Live jazz from the Martin Smith Quartet will soundtrack the afternoon, along with new remixes from our vinyl archive by DJs Adam Sadiq and Ben Riley. The event closes with a public discussion on the meaning of music, photography and materiality in the digital era.

Co-hosted by the Institute of Popular Music Archive (University of Liverpool), Liverpooljazz, & the Open Eye Gallery.